# Paint store inventory software: bases, sizes, colorant > https://rundoo.ai/resources/guides/paint-store-inventory-software/ [Guides](/resources/guides/index.md) /Product Product # Paint store inventory software: bases, sizes, colorant Paint store inventory software has to track untinted bases by line, sheen, base, and size rather than colors, take the right base out of stock when a tinted can sells, account for colorant and mistints, and reorder bases by size around the weekly truck. [![Titus Capilnean](https://pub-5247264bd04e4ebeaecbbedb3bebb9f8.r2.dev/static/images/articles/titus-capilnean.jpeg)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tituscapilnean/) [Titus Capilnean](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tituscapilnean/), Head of Marketing October 27, 2026 Last updated October 27, 2026 Paint store inventory software tracks untinted bases, not colors. Every tinted can you sell has to pull one unit of the right base, in the right line, sheen, and size, out of on-hand stock, and the system around it needs to account for the colorant that went into the can, keep mistints out of your good stock, reorder bases by size in time for the weekly truck, and still keep count of a long tail of sundries. If a system treats "gallon of paint" as a single item with a single count, it will be wrong by the end of your first week, and you'll spend your evenings finding out where. ## Your item file is a base matrix, not a color wall From the sidewalk, a paint department looks small, with a few aisles, a tint area, and a color wall. Your customers think you carry thousands of colors, and in a sense you do, but you don't stock any of them. You stock bases and tint them on demand, and the color is a formula the dispenser follows rather than an item on a shelf. What you carry is every combination of line, sheen, base, and size, and that multiplies faster than most people expect. Here's one interior line and one exterior line, with illustrative numbers rather than any manufacturer's real lineup: | Line | Sheens | Bases per sheen | Sizes | Items | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Interior wall paint (illustrative) | Flat, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss | Base 1 (white/pastel), Base 2 (medium), Base 3 (deep), Base 4 (clear/ultra-deep) | Quart, gallon, 5-gallon | 4 x 4 x 3 = 48 | | Exterior line (illustrative) | 3 sheens | Base 1 to Base 4 | Quart, gallon, 5-gallon | 3 x 4 x 3 = 36 | | **Running total** | | | | **84** | That's 84 stocked items for two lines, before you've added a single primer, stain, specialty coating, or paintbrush. The color wall has more chips than a poker night, and not one of them is a SKU. Any system you evaluate has to hold this matrix comfortably, so watch what happens when a rep builds your interior line in a demo, because if it takes forty-five minutes and a spreadsheet, the demo is telling you something. ## A tinted gallon is a base sale When you tint a gallon for a customer, what should leave inventory is one gallon of the correct base in the correct sheen. The color formula shouldn't consume inventory at all; it should ride on the ticket and save to the customer record, so when that same customer comes back in three years wanting one more gallon for the dining room, you pull the formula and dispense it again instead of digging through a drawer of paint-stained index cards. The tinting side of this, including how formulas move between the dispenser and the register, has its own wrinkles, and we cover those in our [guide to tinting, formulas, and color matching in a paint store POS](/resources/guides/paint-store-pos-color-matching/index.md). Colorant is the one judgment call, and there are two defensible ways to handle it. You can track colorant as inventory, relieving it by the ounce or shot as the tint system dispenses, which gives you a more accurate cost of goods on every can but requires a feed from the tint system and someone who keeps the colorant counts clean. Or you can expense colorant as a supply when you buy it, which keeps the books simpler at the cost of some precision on per-can margin. Neither is wrong, and the right answer depends on your volume and on how your accountant wants to see it, so ask them first and then make sure your software supports the answer rather than forcing the other one. ## Buy by the case, sell by the each You don't buy bases the way you sell them. Gallons might show up from your vendor in cases of four (an illustrative pack size), five-gallon pails come one at a time, and your customer walks out holding a single gallon. The clean way to run this is one product with one base unit and every other unit as a conversion on the product record, so the case of four is four gallons and the system does the arithmetic at receiving and at the register. If your software makes the case and the each two separate items, your counts will drift and your receiving clerk will invent creative ways to cope. The full breakdown is in our [units of measure guide](/resources/guides/units-of-measure-buy-by-the-roll-sell-by-the-foot/index.md). ## Reorder bases by size around the weekly truck Most independents buy on a weekly truck, which makes reorder math mostly truck math. Here's an illustrative example. Say satin Base 1 in gallons sells about six a week, your lead time is one week because the truck comes weekly, and you want three gallons of safety stock. Your reorder point is 6 gallons a week x 1 week + 3 gallons, which is 9, so when on hand plus on order drops to nine gallons, that base goes on this week's purchase order. Down at the slow end, quarts of Base 4 might sell one a week, so a min of two and a max of four covers you without handing the shelf over to cans that gather dust. The formulas, worked through in full, live in our [reorder point and safety stock guide](/resources/guides/reorder-point-and-safety-stock-formula/index.md). What the formula alone won't catch is the season. Exterior lines move in the spring, stain season hits in the fall, and a reorder point you set in April will overstock you by October. History-based forecasting, where the system compares a recent stretch of weeks against the same stretch last year, builds the season into the suggestion without you babysitting every line, and it is worth asking for by name when you shop. ## The mistint shelf Every paint store has one: the shelf of cans that got tinted wrong, came back from a customer who changed her mind, or never got picked up. The discipline that matters for inventory is recording a mistint the moment it happens, so it leaves your good stock and stays out of your sales numbers, and then running the shelf through a dead-stock routine (days since last sale and dollars tied up) so those cans get cleared rather than becoming furniture. We have a full [guide to mistint paint](/resources/guides/mistint-paint/index.md), including how to price the oops shelf, and a [guide to finding and clearing dead stock](/resources/guides/dead-stock-how-to-find-and-clear-it/index.md), so we won't repeat them here. ## Sundries and the long tail Brushes, roller covers, tape, drop cloths, trays, caulk, and sandpaper round out nearly every ticket and rarely get the attention the bases do. Individually they're small money, but together they're a real slice of your inventory dollars, and because nobody watches them the way they watch bases, they're where miscounts and shrink like to hide. Keep them in the item file with real counts and put them on a counting schedule instead of trusting the shelf. Our [paint sundries guide](/resources/guides/paint-sundries/index.md) covers how to price, stock, and merchandise the category. ## Counting a paint store without closing it Nobody wants to close a paint store on a Saturday to count it, and you shouldn't have to. Cycle counting, where you count a slice of inventory on a regular cadence instead of the whole store at once, fits a paint department well. A common approach is ABC: your A items, such as Base 1 and Base 2 gallons in your top sheens, get counted monthly, B items quarterly, and the slow tail once or twice a year. Count by size and mind the dollars, because a five-gallon pail is one unit on the count sheet the same as a quart, but a one-unit miss on a pail costs you about five gallons' worth of base, so give pails a second look whenever the count and the system disagree. The full method is in our [cycle counting guide](/resources/guides/cycle-counting-for-retail-stores/index.md). ## Eight tests to run before you buy Any paint inventory system worth your money should pass all eight of these in a live demo, run with your lines and your numbers rather than a canned dataset: 1. **Build one of your real lines as a base matrix.** Bring a line you carry, with its sheens, bases, and sizes, and watch whether those are natural fields in the system or a workaround made of naming tricks and spreadsheets. 2. **Check out a tinted gallon and have the rep show you what left inventory.** You want to see one gallon of the correct base in the correct sheen come out of on hand, with no color SKU and no mystery adjustment. 3. **Ask where the formula is saved and how a repeat sale works.** A returning customer's color should live on their record and go back to the dispenser without anyone retyping it. 4. **Ask how colorant is handled.** Whether you track it as inventory or expense it as a supply, the system should support your accountant's answer. 5. **Record a mistint and show where it lands.** It should come out of good stock, stay out of your sales numbers, and surface in whatever routine gets the shelf cleared. 6. **Generate a reorder for bases by size from sales history.** Then check whether it respects your weekly truck, your lead times, and the season you're heading into. 7. **Receive an order from your manufacturer or distributor electronically.** Purchase order to received goods to vendor bill, without rekeying line items at the back door. 8. **Cycle count from a phone while the store is open.** If counting requires closing the store or printing count sheets, you'll do it once a year and dread it every time. ## How Rundoo handles it Rundoo is the AI-first POS for independent supply stores, and its paint workflows start at the tint counter. What gets dispensed in COLORx 6 or 7 flows into the sale in Rundoo, including the product, base, color, and quantity, so nothing gets retyped at the register, and every formula saves to the sale and the customer record, so a returning customer's color can be sent back to COLORx for an exact re-dispense. Inventory shows what is on hand, committed, and already on order before you promise product to a customer, and, as our [paint page](/industries/paint/index.md) puts it, "Will calls, mistints, and colorant usage stay accounted for without muddying your sales numbers." One limit worth knowing: Rundoo has no dedicated shrink transaction or shrink reason codes, so stores record mistints through a store-use account. On the buying side, you can send purchase orders directly from Rundoo to Benjamin Moore, with receiving and catalog updates connected, and Dooey, the AI on every screen, can generate a suggested Benjamin Moore order for each location based on sales history and inventory needs, on a cadence you set, as a draft you review and send. The purchase order builder offers Replenishment, Min & Max, and Predictive methods per vendor, and Predictive compares the last few weeks this year with the same weeks last year to get a growth factor, then applies it to what sold in the following weeks last year, so the season is built in. Units of measure work the way described above, with one product, one base unit, and every other unit as a conversion on the product record, and cycle counts run from the Staff app on any iPhone or Android by scanning, with several people counting at once while the store stays open. Share Topics [Product](/resources/guides/index.md#inventory-and-purchasing) [← All guides](/resources/guides/index.md) ## Frequently asked questions How should I set up paint sizes and sheens in my POS? Set up every combination of line, sheen, base, and size as its own stocked item, because those are the cans that sit on your shelf, and keep colors out of the item file entirely, since a color is a formula applied to a base. One interior line in four sheens, four bases, and three sizes is already 48 items, so make sure the system holds that matrix cleanly before you load it. Does tinting a gallon take a base out of inventory? It should. A tinted gallon is a sale of one gallon of the right base in the right sheen, so that base comes out of on hand when the sale completes, while the color formula rides on the ticket and the customer record. Colorant is handled separately, either relieved as inventory from the tint system or expensed as a supply when you buy it. How often should a paint store count inventory? Most paint stores do better with cycle counting than with one annual count: fast-moving bases in your top sheens get counted monthly, slower items quarterly, and the long tail of sundries once or twice a year. Counting a small slice often keeps on-hand numbers honest without closing the store. Can my POS reorder paint bases automatically? A good one will suggest the order for you, using min and max levels per base and size or a forecast that compares recent weeks with the same weeks last year, so the season is built in. You still review the suggestion before it goes to the vendor, because a reorder point set in April will overstock exterior bases by October. ## Find out what Rundoo can do for your business Learn how Rundoo can help you save time, money and hassle running your business. [Book a demo](/signup/index.md) ! ## See Rundoo in action [Product ### Tour the platform POS, inventory, payments, and AI for independent supply stores, in one system.](/product/index.md) [Customers ### Read customer stories See how real paint, hardware, farm, garden, and lumber stores run on Rundoo.](/clients/index.md) ## Keep reading [![ABC analysis for inventory: classify every SKU](https://pub-5247264bd04e4ebeaecbbedb3bebb9f8.r2.dev/static/images/articles/abc-analysis-inventory-aisle-photo.jpg) Product ### ABC analysis for inventory: classify every SKU ABC analysis ranks every SKU by annual dollar movement at cost so your counting, reordering, and vendor attention go where the money is, and here is the step-by-step method with a ten-SKU feed and hardware example.](/resources/guides/abc-analysis-inventory/index.md) [![Backorder vs special order vs out of stock](https://pub-5247264bd04e4ebeaecbbedb3bebb9f8.r2.dev/static/images/articles/backorder-vs-special-order-photo.jpg) Product ### Backorder vs special order vs out of stock Out of stock means your shelf is empty, a backorder means the vendor's shelf is empty, and a special order is an item you never stock that you order for one customer, and each one gets a different answer at the counter.](/resources/guides/backorder-vs-special-order/index.md) [![Cubic yard calculator: feet and inches to yards](https://pub-5247264bd04e4ebeaecbbedb3bebb9f8.r2.dev/static/images/articles/cubic-yard-calculator-photo.jpg) Product ### Cubic yard calculator: feet and inches to yards A cubic yard is length times width times depth in feet, divided by 27, so here is a calculator for rectangles, circles, and triangles with depth in inches, three worked examples, the three mistakes that wreck an estimate, and the conversion to cubic meters.](/resources/guides/cubic-yard-calculator/index.md)